(no subject)

Curiosity's success, the choice of InSight for the next NASA Discovery mission, and listening to a lot of dire NASA budget news, Symphony of Science, and SF podcasts has put me in a contemplative news. Neil Armstrong's death struck me like this:

Consider that of all the human beings that have lived to this point, only a dozen of us have ever set foot on another world, with another dozen who have flown there. We just lost one today. And it seems more and more possible that someday in the future, we'll have a planet full of humans, none of whom have ever journeyed to another world, except via our robots.